The analysis and discussion draw upon reports from government agencies and child care providers, as well as research about parents' use of child care in surveys conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Australian Bureau of Statistics over the past 15 years. This broad based approach allows for an examination of changes in child care over time.

Change in the institutional mix of child care?

Child care usually refers to the non-parental care of children under the age of 12 years. It is generally divided into care for under school age children (0-4 years) and for primary school age children (5-11 years). According to the ABS (1996, Cat. No. 4402.0), around half of all child care used is for parental work related reasons and half is for educational, personal or other reasons, including being of benefit to the child. Because child care is a complicated area, it is useful to consider the variety of types of care available before attempting to relate them to the four social sectors of interest. In Australia, child care has traditionally been defined as 'formal' and 'informal'.

'Formal' Care Types

Formal care is defined by the fact that it is paid for, regulated to some degree and provided outside the child's home. It includes:

Long day care

In specially equipped centres which usually open for 10-12 hours per day, often seven days a week and all year round. These are either Private, for-profit centres or Community-owned, non-profit centres run by a committee. Both have trained, paid workers and legislative requirements for quality of care. Centre care constitutes the largest annual number of hours of formal care used for 0-4 year olds. Parents can claim both means-tested child care assistance (fee subsidisation) and the non-means tested child care cash rebate from the federal government for this care, via 'Centrelink' offices. Many centres now offer pre-school programs for 3-5 year olds as part of daily care.

Also known as 'kindergartens' in some states, pre-school centres provide developmental and educational programs for 3-5 year olds to prepare them for school. It usually consists of between two and five 2.5 hour sessions per week, during school terms only. Although classified as child care, the short sessions are unsuited to the work related needs of parents. Pre-schools are usually housed in specially equipped local council or sometimes church buildings, with trained, paid staff. Parents pay term fees.

This is a program whereby family day carers are registered and paid to take care of up to 5 or 6 children in the carer's own home. The scheme is run partly by local governments and partly by community organisations. Parents pay fees to the local government authority or community group responsible. Parents can claim both child care assistance and child care cash rebate for this type of care. It is mostly for 0-4 year olds but is open to older children too.

This is casual child care, usually for just a few hours' duration, intended for use by parents when something unexpected or infrequent arises such that they need a child minded. It is provided by some child care centres and some family day care schemes, but can be offered by church groups and local community houses too. Means tested fee subsidisation and child care cash rebate are available.

This is care for primary school age children, before or after school hours, or during the school holidays. It is often provided at the school, but is provided by many long day care centres too, as well as local community houses or church/ charitable groups. A small fee is paid, and child care assistance is available for low income families.

This is supplied by the employer, either at a special centre on their own premises, or through the purchase, on behalf of employees, of child care places at nearby services. It can be part of a salary package.

These are centres in rural and remote areas, set up with Commonwealth funding to provide long day care, outside school hours care and playgroups from the one buidling. They also supply mobile services to isolated communities and some are special services for Aboriginal families (known as MACS services).

Informal child care is unregulated and includes generally unpaid care of children, or private arrangements with babysitters. It includes:

Household members

Care in the home. Although adults tend to care for young children, sometimes older siblings look after primary school children before or after school. Many 9-12 year olds look after themselves sometimes.

This can be care in the child's own home, but is often care in the home of a relative. Care by grandmothers constitutes the single largest annual number of hours of (non-parental) informal care used for 0-4 year olds, followed by care given by aunts. Occasionally such care is paid.

Again, this can be care in the child's own home, or in the friend or neighbour's home. Again, it can sometimes be paid (but this is probably in the realms of the 'black economy').

This is in the child's home and can involve a nanny ( live-in or not) or a paid babysitter. If the carer properly registered, then the child care cash rebate can be claimed for these expenses (but babysitting fees are also probably often part of the 'black economy').

Institutional Mix: Market, Community, Government or Family Care?

In examining the role of family as a fundamental social unit and in determining how changes in family services affect family well-being, we are interested in whether or not there have been changes in the mix of family, community, market and state provided child care over the past decade in Australia. To address this question, however, we need to attempt to classify the different types of child care defined above by socio-institutional sector.

What constitutes a market resource?

A definition of market services is that they are run for private gain and seek to make a profit. This category would include private for-profit child care centres, employer provided care and paid nannies or babysitters. Private centres are run primarily fo profit, even though registered centres attract federal government subsidisation of fees for their client families. Employer provided child care can also be regarded as a private or business transaction, as it can constitute part of a salary package or fringe benefit to employees. The hiring of nannies or babysitters, either privately or through agencies is also a commercial transaction. According to the ABS (Cat. No. 4402.0), 1996 estimates of the proportion of children with market sector care are:

• Private centres 7.7 % of all children using care
  
• Employer-provided 0.01% of all children using care
  
• Nannies/babysitters not available in ABS publications
  

In contrast to market services, community services can be defined as non profit and run solely to fulfil a social need in the local neighbourhood or community. This category would include community-owned child care centres, outside school hours care, friends and neighbours. Community owned long day care centres are run by the community and managed by unpaid committees of parents. Nevertheless, these community centres are mostly housed in local council or state government owned buildings and of course also attract federal government subsidisation of fees for their client families. Many outside school hours care programs are run at community houses or centres, or by church and other charitable organisations, while some are run by community groups on school premises. Child care provided by friends and neighbours would generally be considered a community service because it is generally non-profit, non-regulated and organised informally. According to the ABS (Cat. No. 4402.0), 1996 estimates of the proportion of children with community sector care are:

• Community centres 3.2 % of all children using care
  
• OSHC 7.4 % of all children using care
  
• Friends/neighbours 21 % (ABS: most of the care by 'non-relatives')
  

• Family day care 6.4 % of all children using care
  
• Pre-school 13 % of all children using care
  

This is perhaps the easiest type of social resource to define, as it is non parental care by any other relatives or household members, including care provided by older siblings. According to the ABS (Cat. No. 4402.0), 1996 estimates of the proportion of children with family sector care are:

• Sibling care 11 % of all children using care
  
• Relatives 48 % of all children using care

We can see that many forms of child care involve a mixture of resources from two or more of the four social institutions, as shown in Table 1.

As well as a number of types of care sharing resources across social sectors, there can also be an overlap of the types of care used for any one child, as many children have more than one type of child care per week. Therefore, usage proportions sum to greater than 100 per cent. However, bearing all this in mind, approximate estimates of percentages of child care usage within the four social sectors in 1996 can be made as follows:

• Market sector approximately 10 % of children using care.
  
• Government sector approximately 19 % of children using care.
  
• Community sector approximately 31 % of children using care.
  
• Family sector approximately 60 % of children using care.

As can be seen, most child care is provided by community and parental resources. However, there have been changes in the mix of types of child care used over the past decade, and thus changes in the institutional mix, even though these latter changes are more difficult to define and estimate, due to the complications and overlaps explained above.

Information from the ABS Child Care surveys shows changes in the proportion of children using the various types of care between 1987 and 1996 (see Table 2). As can be seen, information is not available for all types of care, nor for distinctions between types of long day care centres. Some breakdown of the latter has been available from the AIHW.

Table 2 shows that over the last decade, for all children 0-11 years, there has been a decrease of 7.2 % in care by friends, neighbours and babysitters, but ostensibly an increase of the same size in outside school hours care, which is the sort of short duration care more likely to be undertaken by friends or neighbours than by relatives (Millward & Matches, 1995). There were increases of 2.7 % in family day care and of 2 % in care provided by relatives, but a decrease of 2.6% in care by siblings. Patronage of pre-schools also declined by 5 %.

The slight overall increase of 0.6% in the proportion of children using long day care centres in the period between 1987 and 1996 actually represents an increase in the private centres' proportion but a decrease in the community centres' proportion of long day care places, as is illustrated by the next table.

According to the AIHW, the 'sponsorship' of formal care services is split between the providers as shown in Table 3. A sponsor is defined as 'the individual, organisation, body or enterprise responsible for the agency which provides the service' (AIHW 1997, p.107). Table 3 compares the 1992 and 1996 profiles of sponsorship of formal care (not including pre-school).

Therefore, with 'formal' child care, we are seeing a shift away from government provision of services toward market supply for long day care, as well as a shift toward community sponsorship for family day care and outside school hours care services. At the same time, the majority of non parental child care continues to be 'informal' care by the household, relatives, friends and neighbours - the family and community sectors. Indeed, relatives continue to be the single most important provider of care for Australian children aged 0-11 years.

Causes for changes in child care

There have been three main types of changes affecting child care services. First are demographic changes, including increases in the number of children in the age groups requiring care and increased maternal employment rates. Second is the increased number of market, community and government provided child care places available. Third is the change in the socio-institutional mix of child care provision. The latter two changes largely result from government policy and budgetary changes.

Demographic changes

The individual situations of parents and families affect decisions about child care use (Millward & Matches 1995), but there have been broad demographic changes which also influence the demand for non-parental child care.

Increases or decreases in the number of pre-school and primary school age children are of course of prime importance in gauging variable demand for market, community or government provided child care services. Between 1987 and 1992 the number of Australian children aged 0-4 years increased by nearly five per cent and the number aged 5-9 years increased by nearly seven per cent, while those aged 10-14 years decreased slightly by 1.7 per cent (AIHW 1993). However, in the following five years (1992-96), the number of 0-4 year olds increased by only one per cent, and the number of 5-9 year olds increased by around three per cent, while those aged 10-14 years increased by five per cent (ABS, Catalogue 3101.0, 1995 & 1997).

These patterns, of course, demonstrate a demographic flow-on effect as the same children grow older, but they also demonstrate that the growth in demand for new child care places appears to have peaked in the early 1990s.

However, although decreasing fertility rates are forecast, McDonald (1997) points out that mothers will still need child care for one child per family and are more likely to be in paid work if they have only one child (AIHW 1997). McDonald also predicts that mothers are likely to be working longer hours. The Institute's Australian Living Standards Study (1992­93), which surveyed 4,900 family households with children found that for working mothers, higher incomes were associated with professional or managerial occupations and with full-time hours of work. Mothers in full-time employment were also the most likely to use long day care centres, which suggests a continuing demand for such forms of child care (Millward & Matches 1995). The occupations and hours of work for fathers made no difference to choice of child care.

Employment patterns of mothers are therefore another important factor associated with parental decisions about child care. The increase in employment rates of mothers has meant more market, community or government sponsored child care places have been needed. The overall proportions of married women in the labour force between the ages of 25-54 years increased from around 55 per cent in the early 1980s to around 70 per cent by 1996. The participation rate for mothers whose youngest child was aged under 5 years increased from 41.5 per cent in 1987 to 47.4 per cent in 1996, and the rate for mothers whose youngest child was aged 5-9 years increased form 61.1 per cent in 1987 to 67.5 per cent in 1996 (McDonald, 1997, p.76).

The growth in maternal employment is consistent with the growth in numbers of child care places over the last decade. A related factor is that more and more children either live in sole-parent headed households where that parent is in paid work, or in two-parent households where both parents are in paid work. Both sets of circumstances necessitate some form of child care. Indeed, the decreased patronage of pre-school centres coincides with an overall increase in the proportion of children using long day care centres. This may well be due to the inconvenience for employed parents of pre-schools' short, sessional hours, as well as the increasingly common provision of pre-school 'programs' within long day care centres. Such programs are designed to prepare the four year olds in child care centres for primary school. While there may be strong debate about the relative quality of such long day care centre programs in comparison with those offered by pre-school centres, patronage trends suggest that the multi-purpose facilities at the day care centres could be the most convenient for the growing numbers of employed mothers.

Parallel increases in employment rates of grandmothers means they may be less available to provide day-time care for grandchildren than has been the case in the past (Millward & Matches 1995). Employment participation rates for women in the older age-groups (which would include many grandmothers) have increased between 1980 and 1996 by around ten per cent for 55-59 year olds and five per cent for 60-64 year olds (McDonald, 1997, p.63).

A further important demographic change affecting demand for child care services is that the average age at marriage and birth of first child is increasing (McDonald, 1997) which may also result in women being older when they become grandmothers. If this trend continues, then many grandmothers may feel they are too old to care for young grandchildren for long periods of time (as may be required if both parents are working full time). Therefore, these lifestyle changes may directly affect the supply of grandmother labour, particularly regarding long periods of child care.

Australian rural families have been experiencing a rural-urban population drift, particularly among young adults who leave rural areas for better employment and education opportunities in the cities (McKenzie 1994). Such shifts in population distributions may also decrease the intergenerational pool of family resources upon which parents with young children may draw for child care provision (Millward 1996).

Finally, the Australian population is a changing mix of various immigrant groups whose cultural backgrounds may influence attitudes toward care of children and who may suffer from lack of informal social supports. For example, there are now a great many Vietnamese people in Melbourne, whose background would tend toward favouring help with child care from the their wider family. However, recent research has shown that after migrating to Australia, Vietnamese parents were more likely than Anglo Australian parents to seek children's services and advice from formal or professional sources than familial or communal sources, primarily due to their lack of family in Australia (Kolar & McGurk 1998). In contrast, other migrant groups, particularly those from Britain, have been more fortunate in having extended family migrate with them to lend support to child rearing (Collins 1993).

Government policy and funding changes

In addition to the socio-demographic changes affecting demand for child care, the other main influence on the pattern of child care usage is that of government policy. This affects not only the availability and affordability of market, community or state child care services, but may also influence the extent of demands placed upon the household or wider family sector to provide child care.

There have been many changes in 'formal' child care services over the last decade. The main thrust from the late 1980s up until 1996 was a great expansion of government subsidisation for the costs of community or market child care services and a public policy focus upon the work-related child care needs of parents.

In the late 1980s, only community-run day care, family day care and before or after school services attracted federal subsidises. However, in January 1991, eligibility for Childcare Assistance (then called Fee Relief) was extended to users of privately owned child care centres, which led to huge increases in the number of private centre places. The doubling of outside school hours care places and increase in family day care places (see page 9 above) also reflect the 1992-96 Commonwealth 'National Child Care Strategy' goal to establish more flexible child care and more care for primary school age children (AIHW, 1997, p.105-106).

Other policy changes were the introduction, from January 1992, of an assets test on Fee Relief eligibility, and the establishment of Work and Child Care Units to help set up employer provided services. Some employer sponsored centres became established between 1992 and 1996 but cater for a very small minority of children. Extra Commonwealth funding was also allocated from 1992 onwards to assist child care services for children with disabilities and special needs, as well as for Multifunctional child care services in rural and remote areas, which include services for Aboriginal and Islander families (AIFS, Diary of Social Legislation & Policy, 1991, 1992; AIHW, 1997).

In 1994, the Quality Improvement and Accreditation System for long day care centres was introduced, whereby centres have to register and (over a couple of years) satisfy quality assurance standards to qualify for continued federal subsidisation to their client families (AIHW, 1993, p.138). There were some other main changes in 1994. A non-income-tested Cash Rebate was introduced to help all women with work-related child care costs. This rebate could be claimed for care provided by any registered carer - including, for the first time, a friend or relative (Diary of Social Legislation and Policy, 1994, AIFS). Also, Fringe Benefit tax exemptions were extended from care in long day care centres to that in employer-sponsored family day care and outside school hours care.

Already more tightly regulated by government, the community-owned long day care centres appear to have been more adversely affected than privately owned centres by more recent changes in federal Government budget initiatives. For example, in 1996-97, $500 million was cut from child care spending, consisting mainly of the removal, in July 1997, of operational subsidies from community-owned centres. Also from July 1997, the threshold for Child Care Assistance payments was raised (AIHW, 1997).

From 1 January 1998, the new Commonwealth Service Delivery Agency (Centrelink) took over responsibility for assessing eligibility for, and making child care payments to, families. Also from January 1998, operational subsidies and block funding for outside school hours care services were removed and the payment of the means-tested Childcare Assistance was limited to 20 hours per week per child for long day care, family day care or outside school hours care services. Since April 1998 the Childcare Cash Rebate has also been means-tested (AIHW, 1997).


Impacts Upon Parents

Parents' choice of child care services reflect needs such as the mother's employment commitments and personal resources such as the family's financial capability to pay for care. However, the availability of wider family, community, government or market child care services within a family's residential locality is also important (Millward & Matches 1995).

Regarding availability of family resources, the Institute's Family Support Networks Project (1982-83) found that metropolitan parents were more likely than geographically remote parents to rely upon grandparents, neighbours, friends or other relatives for work-related child care. Geographically isolated parents in the survey relied much more heavily upon child care centres or taking the child with them to work or leaving the child alone. The isolated parents had not only fewer relatives available, but looser links with the local community, so they experienced higher average weekly child care costs and less satisfactory arrangements than their metropolitan counterparts (d'Abbs 1991).

Ten years later, the ALSS study (1992-93) had similar findings. Parents in some rural areas had virtually no access to long day care centres and no nearby relatives, so they either had to keep children with them while they were working (a potentially dangerous practice on the farm) or mothers could not engage in paid work outside the home until the children were all at school (Millward 1995). This could lead to some economic disadvantage for the family unit, as well as less than satisfactory arrangements for children's safety. In contrast, the inner-city dwelling parents in the ALSS study were the most likely to use long day care centres, which were readily available in inner city areas (Millward & Matches 1995). Opportunities for employment, education or training, as well as respite care through reliance upon market, community and government child care services were therefore greater for the city dwelling parents than for their rural counterparts.

Locality can act as an enhancing factor as well as a hindrance to child care choices. A general increase in the uptake of long day care places has been attributed to oversupply in certain localities, particularly in some areas of Queensland. This oversupply was brought about by the unregulated entry of private operators into the child care market sector during the 1990s. However, if long day care places were less financially subsidised by the government, would parents still increase patronage? Perhaps the answer is 'no', since a recent drop in demand for long day care in these oversupplied areas has apparently accompanied a greater uptake of cheaper family day care and outside school hours care schemes.

Apart from access and affordability, there is also a growing literature exploring the benefits or detriments of different forms of child care for the physical and psychological development of children (see Ochiltree & Edgar 1995 for an overview). However, developmental issues are not the primary focus in this paper. Rather, we are concerned with the relative advantages or disadvantages of the types of child care used and any subsequent impacts of changes in patterns of usage upon parents and family units.

Reduction in use of community-run long day care centres

Public policy and funding changes directly affect the government, market and community care sectors through altering rules and regulations, and by changing the scope or level of government financial support of child care. The impacts of both policy changes and changes in population or workforce demands between 1988-96 were to make government, community and market long day care services more accessible and more affordable for parents, particularly for work-related needs. However, according to a report by the National Association of Community Based Children's Services (NACBCS) released in December 1997, more recent policy changes are reducing the patronage of community-owned long day care centres.

The NACBCS report found that in the majority of the 464 community day care centres surveyed (42 % of all centres nationally), weekly fees increased by an average of $15 between 1996 and 1997. The centres surveyed had lost 'on average 12 families per centre over the last 6 months' (p.4) and 'over 30 community-owned child care centres so far have closed nationally', purportedly as a result of cuts in government subsidies (p.6).

Of course, concerns over costs are not a new issue. Indeed, in a number of Institute studies (ACIF 1983; ALSS 1992-93; ALC 1996) the main dissatisfaction with long day care, or barrier to its use, has been the cost to parents (Millward & Matches 1995; Greenblat & Ochiltree 1993; Wolcott 1999 forthcoming). This is particularly so in the market sector, since parents generally pay for full days of care (10-12 hours) even when using fewer hours per day. Some also pay for their child's place at the centre when the family is away on holidays and, in some centres, parents are 'fined' if they are late to pick up their child in the evening (NACBCS 1997).

The NACBCS report notes that some parents have decreased the hours of care booked by altering their working patterns or hours, or have given up work altogether and withdrawn their children from community-run centres in order to care for them at home. In the Institute's recent Australian Lifecourse Study (1996), Wolcott (1999, forthcoming) found that mothers certainly tailor their working arrangements and hours to fit in with the child care either available or affordable: for 69 per cent of employed mothers interviewed, this meant working part-time, at home, shifts or more flexible hours.

Another reason for reduced patronage of community-run centres found in the NACBCS report was that reduced staffing levels affected centres' capacity to cater for special needs children or for infants (under 2 years). Since many private market sector centres do not cater for special needs children or infants, due to the higher costs associated with higher staff to child ratios for such children, some parents are having difficulty placing children at all. For example, a staff member said 'other centres don't cater for babies. There is a local private centre, but they won't take babies' (NACBCS 1997, p.9)

Community-owned centres had also been able to subsidise some low income families, or those in crisis, by using their operational subsidy. However, according to a staff member 'We have lost a number of low income parents - especially students - because of fees.' Less accessible care for non-work related reasons was certainly portrayed as a concern for some families:

The focus for this centre and others in the area is early childhood education and intervention and support for families in various states of crisis ...... As a church organisation, we had many children from low income families, but it is not viable to keep subsidising them as we are now expected to become a business. For the first time in 25 years we do not have a waiting list. (NACBCS 1997, p.13).

Most long day care centres operate for 11 or 12 hours per day, which can be very convenient for employed parents. However, all parents must pay for full days even if only requiring 8 or 10 hours of care for their children. Consequently, as parents requiring non-work related fee subsidisation are eligible for a maximum of 20 hours per week, they also have to pay for two full days, which means paying full rates for the extra 2 or 4 hours they are charged for per week. This has caused some difficulties for low income parents who have dropped down to using only one day of care for their child. It is suggested that such a change may disadvantage such parents' educational or training endeavours (NACBCS 1997).

Another recent report was released by the Queensland Child Care Coalition (QCCC) in September 1998. It also found that many children had been withdrawn from the surveyed services between January 1998 and June 1998.
It reports other impacts upon parents of the loss of Commonwealth subsidies and changes in regulations. These were the imposition of extra levies, such as weekly nappy, sheet or toy levies, working bee or maintenance levies and parental provision of materials, food or drink on top of set fees. Less supervision and lower quality of programs for children were also reported. Two specific instances noted are the move to only one supervisor on duty for the after school care of between 50 to 100 children, and the replacement of qualified pre-school teachers with non-teachers due to cost-cutting. The questions of value for money and satisfaction with quality of care must be raised here, as the federal Quality Improvement and Accreditation Scheme has, arguably, lifted parental expectations about staff training and quality of care.

Greater uptake of government and family sector care?

Despite indications of impacts reported in these two recent surveys of child care providers, there is, as yet, no accurate quantification of the moves between different forms of care being made by parents, nor of moves back into at-home parental care. It is also difficult to access at this stage how many families are being adversely affected or positively affected by changes between child care sectors.

It can, however, be noted that there has been a large uptake of family day care and outside school hours care (OSHC) services over the past few years. Both these forms of care are a mixture of community-based and government services, and both have the advantage to parents of lower costs per hour. OSHC can be very convenient as it is often at the child's school, so no travelling is required before or after school and the child is in a familiar setting, perhaps with some of their friends.

Some families also find family day care (FDC) quite flexible in accommodating times and days needed or with changing arrangements for parents working changeable hours. Apart from lower costs, FDC carers also will often look after infants (under 2 years) in contrast with many market sector services. Another advantage to parents is the centrally organised nature of FDC, so if a family is not happy with the carer assigned, they can often change to an alternative carer in the same area. The main adverse impact on movement from long day care to FDC is that the facilities can be inferior, carers are not trained to the same standards and an accredited pre school program is not offered for 4-year-olds.

Finally, there is much debate about the extent to which recent reductions in the use of community or market long day care places are being offset by greater use of the family sector, particularly grandmothers. Advantages of care by relatives are that it is often flexible regarding hours and days of care and is usually at no cost to parents, thus allowing them to maximise their earnings (Ochiltree 1998). However, past research has also found that care by the family sector is often for limited hours per week. For example, while grandparents tend to fill-in the child care gaps related to sickness or school holidays, they generally provide work-related care suited to part-time rather than full-time workers (Millward 1996). Indeed, grandmothers often find that the full-time care of young children is too demanding and so parents need to juggle two or more types of child care per week if working full-time.

A further problem with family sector care is that there can be different views of parenting between the two generations of parents and grandparents. This can cause conflict within the family, particularly with in laws. Working parents have also been troubled by feeling obliged to reciprocate by helping the child's grandparents in return. If they do not have the time to do so, this can also cause strains in inter-generational relationships (Ochiltree 1998).

Summary and Conclusions

The main change over the last decade in the child care service mix has been the increase in provision of care by the for-profit or market sector. However, there is some evidence of a reduced take-up rate of market services now due to oversupply in some localities. There is also some evidence of a reduction in use of community sector long day care services as a result of increased costs to parents and reduced breadth of services offered by these centres. At the same time, the level of non-parental child care provided by the family sector has slightly increased over the past decade.

The main reason for these changes is a turn-around in government policy away from extra subsidisation of the community and family sectors. Therefore a greater responsibility for child care appears to be directed towards parents' private means to purchase market care and to reliance upon family sector supports.

There are several main impacts upon family units. Financial difficulties may arise as costs for market and community sector care affect family budgets. There is also some evidence that it can lead to changes in parents' employment patterns. For instance, family incomes may be reduced if mothers leave the work-force or reduce their hours of work due to child care difficulties. Changes in mothers' work commitments or situation may also have adverse consequences for their future career prospects at a time when the fairly high incidence of divorce means that mothers' work-force attachments are most important for the longer term economic self sufficiency of one-parent family units (Funder 1993). Furthermore, if parents with infants and special needs children have less readily available care, their work-force participation may also be affected.

The care of children during family crises or through respite care, while not work-related, has been an important element in community-owned long day care services. Therefore, reduced access to such care may place great strain upon needy family units. It has also been suggested that the study or training opportunities of low income parents could be curtailed by movement away from community-owned care, which could be detrimental to their future employment prospects. Changes in access to community sector child care therefore raise questions of social inequity among parents, as community centres were strictly targeted to respond to the special needs of families in certain communities - often those suffering socio-economic disadvantage.

An extra burden on grandparents or additional psychological strain for parents may also result from changes in the mix of child care types. Parents appear to be happiest with child care provided by the family, but any growth in the availability of care by family members, particularly grandparents, may be seriously in question. More grandmothers are in the paid work force themselves, so may be less available to provide child care. Also, more grandparents may feel that they are too old to supply full-time care for young children, as delayed childbearing becomes more common.

Child care, as a part of the wider social support mechanism, demonstrates the inter-dependence of support from various social institutions. However, this does not necessarily mean that market, community, government and family child care services are interchangeable. For instance, AIFS studies have found that the absence of kin was not compensated by provision of child care via friends or neighbours: 'instead, parents relied more heavily upon creches and child care centres' when kin were unavailable (d'Abbs 1991). Further, if parents lived in an area where there were severely limited market, community or state child care services, as in some rural and remote areas, they often had no recourse to these services either (Millward 1995).

According to the AIHW, public provision and subsidisation of child care services can be seen as a benefit to the whole society because they help families to become economically self-sufficient through assisting parents to undertake education or training and to participate in the paid employment market (AIHW 1993, p.135). However, as yet, we only have sketchy, mainly economic, data on the effects of child care patterns and changes. We do not really know much about the social and personal impacts upon family units of changes in the socio-institutional mix of child care usage.

The Institute's new 'Social Exchanges' program seeks to go beyond purely economic outcomes and explore the benefits or detriments to family wellbeing of parents satisfying their child care needs in a variety of ways. One important area for further research is to explore the impact of recent changes in the community, market and state child care sectors upon care by grandparents. Are extra burdens being placed upon grandparents as they are asked to 'pick up the slack'? If so, does this have detrimental consequences for older women or for inter-generational relations? Also of concern are the effects of changes in child care use upon the welfare of mothers and children, and upon the quality of marital relationships.

References

ABS (1995), Cat. No. 3101.0, Sept 1995, Canberra.
ABS (1996), Cat. No. 4402.0, Canberra.
ABS (1997), Cat. No. 3101.0, Sept 1997, Canberra.

AIFS (1991) Dairy of Social Legislation and Policy, AIFS, Melbourne.
AIFS (1992) Dairy of Social Legislation and Policy, AIFS, Melbourne.
AIFS (1994) Dairy of Social Legislation and Policy, AIFS, Melbourne.

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